The Art and Architecture of Death

Monument Catalogs

By the late nineteenth century, cemetery monuments were an industry rather than a craft. Catalogs of standard designs were printed by the makers, and you could order a monument from Sears the same way you ordered a washing machine. Here are a few of those catalogs that have been preserved on line; you may find exactly the design of one of your ancestors’ monuments.

American Bronze Company (no date, but an endorsement inside is dated 1888). Purveyors of “white bronze”; you will notice that the word “zinc” is never mentioned. “It is cast from a refined, non-corrosive metal,” the catalog tells us in “Some Interesting Facts About White Bronze,” but the name of that metal is apparently not appealing enough to mention. This catalogue includes an engraving of an entire zinc mausoleum (or “burial vault,” as the catalogue calls it), which Father Pitt would love to see in person; he has not found any pictures of extant zinc mausoleums on line.

Monumental Bronze Company (dated by the librarian to 1882). Another purveyor of “white bronze,” though this company quite clearly states that “white bronze” is zinc and goes on to explain that zinc is a “pure metal,” like gold, silver, or copper. This catalogue is a treasury of cemetery symbolism, with pages of standard “Bas Relief Emblems” (the term always appears in quotation marks) that can be screwed into the appropriate spaces on your monument.